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Fun Facts

1. Juliet was most likely played by a man because women were not allowed to act.

2. Shakespeare original title for Romeo and Juliet is ” The Most Excellent and Lamentable Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet.”

3. In November 1582, Shakespeare applied for a license to marry Anne Whateley.

4. Shakespeare wrote Romeo and Juliet and it was the first play about romantic love.

5. Shakespeare was baptized on April 26, 1564, in Stratford-upon-Avon, just three days before the Stratford parish register recorded an outbreak of the plague.

6. Romeo and Juliet, alongside Hamlet, is probably Shakespeare’s most performed play and has also been adapted in many forms.

7. Many of Shakespeare’s plays are based on others’ earlier plays, histories, and poems. This was common practice at that time.

8. The first definite reference to Shakespeare as a playwright is in a pamphlet by Robert Greene, who wrote, “There is an upstart Crow, beautified with our feathers, that with his Tiger’s heart wrapped in a Player’s hide, supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blank verse as the best of you: and being an absolute Johannes fac totum, is in his own conceit the only Shake-scene in a country.”

9.In the 1570s, John Shakespeare was prosecuted (or threatened with prosecution) four times for the illegal activities of trading in wool and money-lending

10. More than 80 spelling variations are recorded for Shakespeare’s name, from “Shappere” to “Shaxberd.

11.Many of Shakespeare’s plays are based on others’ earlier plays, histories, and poems. This was common practice at that time.

12.In Shakespeare’s time, theaters had no curtain and used little or no scenery. Playwrights described the setting within the text of the performance.

13.

Shakespeare was buried in the Holy Trinity Church, Stratford-upon-Avon. He put a curse on anyone daring to move his body from that final resting place. His epitaph was:

Good friend for Jesus’ sake forbear,To dig the dust enclosed here:Blest be the man that spares these stones,And curst be he that moves my bones.

Though it was customary to dig up the bones from previous graves to make room for others, Shakespeare’s remains are still undisturbed.

14. Shakespeare’s profession was acting. He is listed in documents of 1592, 1598 and 1603 as an actor.

15. Some scholars have maintained that Shakespeare did not write the Shakespeare plays, with at least fifty writers having been suggested as the “real” author. However, the evidence for Shakespeare’s having written the plays is very strong.

16. Shakespeare is the second most quoted writer in the English language – after the various writers of the Bible.

17. Some of Shakespeare’s signatures have survived on original documents. In none of them does he spell his name in what has become the standard way. He spells it Shakespe; Shakspe; Shakspere and Shakespear.

18.‘William Shakespeare’ is an anagram of ‘I am a weakish speller’.

19. Shakespeare and Anne Hathawy had three children together – a son, Hamnet, who died in 1596, and two daughters, Susanna and Judith.

20. William Shakespeare’s inspiration for Romeo and Juliet came from the author Brooke Poem, the original tale is believed to be the story of Mariotto and Gianozza by Masuccio Salernitano.

21. Shakespeare lived to 52. It is known that he was born in April 1564 and that he died on 23rd April 1616.